Leadership and Life Essentials: Identify, Define, Reinforce - A Framework for Core Values

Speaker A: Foreign M welcome to Leadership and Life Essentials with Jackie, where I cut through the noise and deliver concise, actionable insights on effective leadership. I'm your host, Jackie Surgeon Ergaleni from Leadership in Life by K Rec. In a world overflowing with information, this show offers short, focused episodes packed with tangible advice and tools to help you lead and live better. Let's dive in. Welcome to Leadership and Life Essentials. This is episode 98 culture isn't an Accident why Values need to be defined, Not Just named. You've got a value statement somewhere. Maybe you've even added it into your website, an employee handbook, and possibly even into job postings. Big check. You've nailed it right? Now. Think about the last decision you made because of those values. Can you name it? What about others in your organization? If you asked different people, could they name all your values? Could they actually describe what they mean and and are they the same? Most leaders can't describe how their values translate into decisions. Most employees can't name or describe an organization's core values. When core values are treated like a checkbox, check it off and it's done. Rather than incorporating them into decisions, discussions, praise, hiring, and the overall running of the organization, they aren't functional, real or useful. Meanwhile, M your team is still making decisions every single day, with or without a value, telling them how Someone's deciding right now whether to tell a client the truth about a missed deadline or to soften it, whether to stay late to fix something or let it wait until tomorrow. If your values were never actually defined, then they're guessing at what you'd want. Or they aren't even paying attention to the values since they aren't even real to the organization. They're making decisions according to their own values or their own framework, not the one that you want for the organization. I want to share a three step framework for your core values. Identify, Define, Reinforce. You need all three. Omit one, and your core values don't drive decisions and behavior. Identify comes first, and it's simpler than most people expect. You aren't starting from scratch. You have values even if you can't articulate them. Look at your best people. Look at the decisions you're proudest of, the ones where you handled something the right way even though it cost you time or money or comfort. Maybe it's the time someone on your team caught a mistake and told the client before they even noticed, instead of hoping it just slipped by. It's really about discovering what's most important. You don't need the perfect word. And you don't need to worry about whether you picked respect or integrity. The important part will come when you move to step two. Define your values are likely already there and operating. Or at least they were when you were a startup before you scaled. While many people work on, uh, narrowing it down from a list of values, I recommend a different process when I work with organizations to do this work. I even followed this process when I identified and defined my own personal core values. I think it's important to verb them up too. They should tell someone how to act, and a noun or adjective just doesn't do that. My personal core values are prioritize family, live with integrity, and serve others. One thing worth knowing. As you go through this, the exact word matters less than what you actually think. Some people get caught up between respect and integrity. Let's say as you go through the define step, you can use one to define the other so you aren't losing it. For me, I define live with integrity as, uh, stating I treat others with respect because I believe I can't demonstrate integrity. Without respect, someone else is doing this work might land in the same place and called accountability instead. Similar ideas will often fold into each other more than you split them apart. The point isn't actually the word, it's what's underneath it. And it isn't just a team exercise. If you're running solo right now, you still have a culture. You're just the only one who has to be intentional about it. Which naturally brings us to step two, which I've been talking about a little bit already. And it's the one that most people skip. Define. I worked with an organization where one of their core values was go beyond. When the executive team landed on it, they were clear deliver an excellent client experience and result. But nobody had ever written down what it actually meant in practice. One manager decided it meant working huge amounts of overtime, grinding, staying late most nights, and then expecting his team to do the same. That was never the intention, though. The value was about delivering an excellent client experience, going the extra step for the person that you're serving, not burning your people out to prove commitment. But without a written definition, he m filled in that blank himself. And once he did, that interpretation became the culture for his whole team. And this created a situation where his team was evaluated against a different standard than other teams. If you don't clearly define what the value means, what behaviors you expect to see, then you run the risk that someone else gets to put their spin on it. And that breeds inconsistency which is the opposite of what you want. Brene Brown has a stat that she shared that has really stuck with me. Only about 10% of organizations actually turn their values into behaviors that can be taught and then held accountable to. 10% is pretty low. The other 90% either don't follow their values or. Or it's the Wild west with everyone interpreting the values in their own way. Worst of all, there might be no values evident at all. Defining simply means describing the behaviors that exemplify that value. For my value of serve others, I named it and then I wrote out what it actually means. I help when I can. I ask what someone needs instead of assuming I already know, and I decline when I can't bring real value to a situation. That last part is important to me. Serve others could be overwhelming without guardrails around it. And as part of my definition, I was able to put up those guardrails. Serve others could easily run me into over committing and it would pull directly against another one of my values. Prioritize family. Writing out the behaviors ahead of time is what lets me say no without a, uh, made up excuse and without the guilt. I know exactly why I'm saying it, and so would anyone if I explained it to them. Bernay calls this clear as kind. Being specific about a value means including what it means to say no. And saying that is kinder than leaving people to guess and to get it wrong. So you've identified your values and now you've defined them with real behaviors, including where they push back on each other. Now step three Reinforce them. Values become embedded when they're part of a conversation. Constantly. Gina Wickman, who founded eos, the entrepreneurial operating system, says you hire, fire, reward, promote and recognize based on values. An idea that he pulls from Jim Collins, who first, then what? When you incorporate values into praise and ensure the people you promote live your values, you're, um, embedding your values. The true test is when decisions are evaluated against your core values. Many businesses stop at hiring uh, to core values if they use their values at all. When is the last time you fired someone who didn't live your core values? What about praising someone using a specific example of how they lived a core value, all the while naming the core value. Could every employee in your organization name your core values? Do you tolerate anti value behaviors? If an employee still hits their KPIs, then you're actively, even if unintentionally, undermining your values and your culture. If someone consistently isn't living the values that you've defined and you let it slide because they hit their numbers. Everyone else on the team is seeing that too. They notice what you tolerate as closely as what you celebrate. I work with organizations to do this work. I developed a hiring guide with questions designed specifically to evaluate fit to values. Questions built to elicit examples and even more important, non examples of the behaviors that we defined. In talking with the founder a couple of months later, he told me they started hiring the right people intentionally rather than just going on gut feel. And a few candidates self selected out before an offer was even on the table because the questions made it obvious for them that they weren't a right fit. Before that guide existed, fit was just a feeling on their team. It was big, hard to explain, easy to get wrong. Afterwards, it was something that they could point to. Another leader I worked with used the same idea on the recognition side. Their Employee of the Month program had gone flat. Submissions were low and often thin. It was just the same vague praise over and over. So they rewrote the criteria around their actual defined values instead of just a general who did something good this month, submissions picked up both in number and actually quality as well, because people finally knew what they were supposed to be looking for. Both organizations have a great culture that's driven by their core values. So let's go back to the question I opened with. Can you name the last decision you made because of one of your values? If the answer came fast, you're probably nailing it and you've done this work, awesome. If it didn't, it's not a failure, it's just where you start working. And we've reached the part of the show where we talk about what you can do. I have lots of blog posts and radio shows about culture and core values. You can read Jim Collins Work on first to then what? Maybe you take one of your existing values and write out three specific, uh, behaviors that show it in action. Try tying your next praise to a core value. Maybe you add one interview question that's tied to a value. You can try asking two people on your team to define one of your core values. If they're not yet defined, use their own words and compare notes to see if they're aligned. Maybe reflect back on your last couple of promotions and ask if they're a culture fit. Do they live your values? If you want support to do this work, reach out. I love doing it. For resources related to this show, you can check out the show page at ah leadershipandlife cashow98 and remember your culture requires you to identify and define your values and then continually reinforce them. You've reached the end of another episode of Leadership and Life Essentials. If you want to learn more about today's topics, please visit leadershipandlife Ca, where you'll find episode show notes and free bonus resources. I'm Jackie Sergener Galeoni, founder of Leadership and Life by Kric, Inc. Where I strive to empower leaders with the skills no one taught them to create teams who want to work together. Thanks for joining me.